June 9, 2015

SpaceX released a spectacular video from a camera installed on the Payload Fairing of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket that recently launched a communications satellite for the country of Turkmenistan. The video was retrieved from a GoPro camera fastened to one half of the payload fairing of that mission after it had washed ashore and was discovered by beachcombers in the Bahamas.

The fairing debris was discovered in the surf off the coast of Elbow Cay by a group of tech company executives from South Carolina on May 29. From labels on the debris it was clear that the piece originated from a SpaceX rocket. Kevin Eichelberger Tweeted photos of the group’s find and quickly got a response from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk thanking him for the photos that could be “helpful for figuring out fairing reusability.”

Attached to the fairing was a camera housing facilitating a GoPro Camera which Eichelberger agreed to send back to SpaceX. The decision of attaching a GoPro camera to the fairing is rather curious as the camera – unless there is a special setup in place – will only record video in its memory to be later pulled off a data card which in most cases will be impossible since only a few payload fairings are actually recovered by chance. Nonetheless, SpaceX must have gone through the necessary precautions of using special GoPros which store collected video in an encrypted format that could only be pulled off the memory card by SpaceX in compliance with U.S. regulations such as ITAR.

By June 3, SpaceX came forward with news that the company would be dispatching a team to Elbow Cay to retrieve any hardware that was found for inspection and safe disposal after the beach finding had made the local news as a problematic piece of waste that could have been costly to dispose of locally.

The video from the camera fastened to the fairing half was released by SpaceX on June 5 under the title “Falling Back to Earth.”

Set to the music of Blue Danube by Johann Strauss, the video shows the fairing rotating in the outermost stretches of the atmosphere with Earth passing by below, showing a remarkable view of the thin atmosphere in contrast to the blackness of space. Also visible are cloud patterns that can be compared with video from the second stage of the TurkmenÄlem 52E satellite launch, confirming that the fairing video is indeed from the April 27 Falcon 9 mission.

Visible in the video is the plume of the second stage of Falcon 9 that headed on towards orbit after jettisoning the fairing at an altitude of just over 110 Kilometers, around four minutes after liftoff. The fairing of the Falcon 9 rocket consists of composite materials and measures 5.2 meters in diameter and 13.9 meters in length, large enough to facilitate even the biggest satellites.

It protects the spacecraft from external factors such as weather and humidity while sitting on the launch pad and shields the delicate satellite hardware from aerodynamic forces occurring in the initial phase of the climb into orbit when the rocket flies through the dense layers of the atmosphere. Once departing the discernible atmosphere, the fairing halves are split open by pneumatic systems, rotate outward on hinges and separate from the rocket, sending the halves into the rotation that can be clearly seen in the video released by SpaceX.

Photo: SpaceX

Aside from the jaw-dropping video from the fairing, the small tidbit offered by Musk with regards to fairing re-usability shows that SpaceX is progressing right along in its quest to reduce launch cost and increase launch rate by implementing re-usability on many of the components of the Falcon 9.

The company is making good progress in their effort to make the first stage re-usable by flying it back to either a floating platform in the Ocean or a land-based pad for a propulsive landing and rapid reuse. The Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships are already in operation, the SpaceX west coast launch site has a landing pad that is almost finished and work is underway at Cape Canaveral to establish the East Coast landing site – all in preparation for a first attempt to return a Falcon 9 booster to land later this year, aiming to mark another milestone in space history.

Photo: SpaceX

Photo: SpaceX

Aside from the visible progress on booster reuse and its spectacular aspects associated with landing a rocket stage propulsively, there had been various rumors that SpaceX was actively looking into making the payload fairing re-usable. Production of the large composite fairing structures was foreseen to become a bottleneck in the production process of Falcon 9 rockets once engine availability - the major bottleneck in the past - is no longer an issue through increased production rate and first stage re-use (or at least engine re-use).

Therefore, SpaceX had been looking into various options for fairing reuse and likely decided to take their chances to get some video from the fairing back by adding lightweight and inexpensive GoPro cameras to the fairing, providing insights into the environment experienced by the large fairing structure on the way back to Earth.

From the video released by SpaceX that cuts out before atmospheric re-entry, it would seem that there is a real possibility for the addition of some type of stabilization system to bring the fairing halves into a good position to survive re-entry. Destruction on impact with the water could be avoided with parachutes, however, a recovery from the Ocean will require one or two additional teams dispatched to downrange locations.

Fragments of payload fairings are the components of rockets most likely to be found as they oftentimes float to shore even months after launch while heavier launch vehicle parts immediately sink after splashing down. SpaceX fairing debris have previously been found in North Carolina and Hawaii, however, no video recording equipment was recovered with these pieces. Atlas V fairing parts ended up in Bermuda and the Bahamas, Ariane 5 fairing parts and entire fairing halves have washed ashore in South America and fairing pieces from Soyuz launches out of Plesetsk have been known to wash up in Scandinavia.

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